500 Transformers. OMG.

I knew this day was coming. One purchase here, another one there, and before you knew it, I have amassed an army of 500 Transformers.

As of 8/13/2010, the TF count was 300. Almost 22 months later, I bought 200 more TFs. Doing the math and rounding down, that’s about 9 figures a month in this time span. That also translates to about 2 figures a week, or roughly 105 figures for a year.

9 TFs a month in about the last 2 years is definitely more than 4 a month in the 6+ years prior to that. What exactly accounted for this increase? I’m trying to draw some conclusions by looking at my TF List. It’s too bad I didn’t keep records of the dates of my purchases until this year, but I can still determine approximately what were the figures bought since August of 2010. There were about 43 DOTM figures, 23 TF Prime figures, 16 PCCs, 34 Reveal the Shields, and 31 Generations. All these I’m pretty certain came at or after Aug 2010. That brings the total to almost 150. Add in some misc purchases here and there, such as Star Wars and Marvel crossovers, the later figures from ROTF, some newer MPs, and 3rd party products, it’s easy to see how that brings the total to 200.

So what does this all mean? Well for one thing, it means that Hasbro released a freakin’ boatload of Transformers in this time span. The 3rd Transformers movie probably has something to do with that. And it also means I decided to buy many of the figures released. But looking back, I can’t think of that many TFs that I regret buying during this stretch. Sure there are some figures here and there that I wish I can return to the store, like some PCCs and some Star Wars stuff. But for the most part, I’m glad I bought most of these 200. In the last 22 months, it was rare for me to be sorely disappointed with a purchase. The logical conclusion to draw here is that the quality of the figures have really gone up.

Another big reason for all these TFs is I started hunting for them at discount stores (eg. Ross, Marshalls, TJMaxx, etc). Generally speaking, deluxes are usually $6 or $7 at these places, while Voyagers typically run for $10. Scouts or smaller are at $5 or less. At these prices, I don’t even blink and just grab the figure to checkout whenever I see something I want. And I found just about everything that was in mass retail at the discount stores, like the Movie figures, PCCs, Generations, the Crossovers, and Reveal the Shields (RtS). In fact, for RtS, very often I only found them at discount stores. At such low prices, I bought multiples of many figures, mostly from the CHUG-verse. Movie figures are generally very affordable regardless of where you buy them. However, with some TFs, there’s no getting around paying full MSRP. This is the case with TF Prime figures, the MPs, and of course the 3rd party products.

Still, 500 TFs is a lot. So this year I’m making an effort to not buy as many. As a rule, I stopped buying multiples (unless there’s a good reason, like for example the Vehicons, which sadly I still haven’t found any as of this writing). However, there are some good stuff on the horizon, such as the upcoming FOC figures, more TF Prime toys, and some Asia only exclusives. Keeping that count from growing will be difficult.

In the comments for the 300 post, Gemini said it won’t be long before I have 400, and danbugman said 300 won’t be nearly enough. Oh how right they were. 500 and growing… Long Live TFs! Transform and Roll Out!